Nychthemeron
by lalunaticscribe
Summary: Based on beanpots' Day/Night AU. Cross-posted to AO3. "So, in the interest of investigation," started Phichit, Viceroy of Dusk, upon his unannounced arrival within the Vault of Heaven, "I need Your Majesties to report the exact circs where the two of you just got caught in a Nychthemeron circle."


_**Nychthemeron**_

 _ **An LLS Production**_

 _ **Based off of beanpots'**_ _ **Day and Night AU**_.

* * *

 _A timeless and forgotten place,  
The moon and sun in endless chase...  
Each in quiet surrender,  
as the other reigns the sky...  
_  
– "Storm",  
by Blackmore's Night

* * *

"So, in the interest of investigation," started Phichit, Viceroy of Dusk, upon his unannounced arrival within the Vault of Heaven, "I need Your Majesties to report the exact circs where the two of you just got caught in a Nychthemeron circle."

"Who drew that here?!" The Night King stood under an umbrella ringed with the Milky Way, right at the edge of the inscribed circle. So far, he was the only Monarch panicking. Phichit suspected that only a very small part of King Yuuri's panic was concerned with being caught in the heat of Day with only his umbrella, and that a larger part was more concerned with being trapped in the Vault with King Viktor, who was taking this as a great joke.

Having already knelt down to examine the inscribed magic circle, which had created the aforementioned effect of Night's king being trapped in the temporal realm of Day, Phichit looked closer – and rolled his eyes. The structural integrity of high-level time-bending magic circles was only as good as the material used to construct it, and chalk from the mortal world was only useful for a while. _A while_ , defined as however long it took for King Yuuri to remember the Night's ability to summon dew and weaken the chalk, long enough to break through the conceptual barrier that held down the Monarchs of Day and Night within the Vault of the Sky.

"We done yet?" Yuri, Viceroy of Dawn and Herald of Day, snapped whilst he still held bugle used this day to herald the dawn. "Blue hour's going to be over soon."

"Is it? Time really does fly!" Despite being a temporal deity, the Viceroy of Dusk's own nature as a liminal entity was the only thing allowing to coexist with Dawn's ruler everyday in that one hour when the Vault was predominantly blue – early in the dawn and late in the dusk. "Then we gotta leave, Yurio!"

"Don't call me that! My name is Yuri!" Dawn gained a complexion to match the so-called rosy fingers written about in Human stories.

Of course, Dawn's complexion went unremarked as Yuuri entered a panic. "Wait, what? Phichit, don't leave me here-! What do we do, what do we-"

"Yuuri~" the other royal had taken the chance to sneak up on the other king, and was currently trapping Yuuri in a bear hug. "Do you hate me so much?"

"N- No! You're very nice, Viktor!"

"Then why don't you want to stay with me~?" the Day King had a different opinion, if the fact that it was going to take a crowbar to separate him from the Night King was any indication. "The circle's not interfering with _duty_ , right?"

"Viktor, I desperately need to- Ah!" the Night King Yuuri had changed the target of his ire when a bouquet of Coronal roses had somehow scattered from the inside of his ultramarine cloak. "Erm, er..."

The Day King looked, down to the bouquet, and then up to the Night King's usual grey complexion turn something akin to the red of Mars. "And here," he evenly started, "I always wondered as to why my roses kept getting returned."

"There's a perfectly good reason I swear- Viktor, too close!"

"We can't afford to replace the Solar eastern, just so you know," Phichit added when it looked like said crown of Sol was about to embed itself into the Night King's Astral corolla.1

Viktor paused in his advances, resembling for a moment the solar wolf that regularly plagued the Day very much. The gold crown was taken down from his silver hair, set to the left of the shared Throne of the Sky. Having thus secured the delicate adornment in a manner that would had had Solar Minister Yakov in a conniption were he present, King Viktor then turned towards his counterpart and the target of his regular sending of roses for the past month.

"Yuuri, let's get to know each other better, okay~?"

Yuuri yelped, gingerly stuck between the advancing King of Day and the boundary demarcated by the Nychthemeron. "Er... erm... Phichit-"

"Oh, look, gotta go." Phichit turned on one heel with the ease of long practice from running away, noting that Yuri was already preparing to make himself scarce. "Don't worry, the Nychthemeron covers a period of twenty-four hours where day and night can coexist, so you're safe inside! And now you can actually talk to him instead of running, Your Majesty! I'll get that report tonight!"

"Phichit! Don't leave me alone here!"

"You're not alone, King Day is glued to you!" Phichit hollered back as he walked out.

The sun dog Makkachin gave a woof of acknowledgement as Phichit got out from under the dome that encompassed the Vault of the Sky, and lay in wait by the East entrance. A heartbeat later, his hand reached out and seized onto the plumed aigrette, which was coincidentally attached to the head of the Dawn's Viceroy.

"So, that moon-chalk which is coincidentally immune to being washed away and requires an electric charge to remove." Phichit commented as his Viceroy counterpart made a terrible face-plant outside of the Vault – thankfully away from the notice of two equally besotted rulers of day and night. "Your work?"

" _Dermo_ ," Yuri mumbled, rubbing at his scalp under the plumed headdress. "How'd you realise it?"

"Humans talk about means, motive and opportunity," Phichit held up three fingers. "Means: only the great nobility of the two realms know about the Nychthemeron. Opportunity: King Day terminates his shift everywhere, but only the four of us can reach the Vault of the Sky for the handover of Night to Day. Motive: we're the only ones who have a stake in the two idiots finally getting together. _Quod erat demonstrandum_."

Phichit drew a breath out of habit. "Why?"

Yuri took a long while to reply. "...because they're both idiots. They're both alive, both immortal, and both wasting years and years of sending roses to each other without exchanging words."

"So, you got the two of them stuck in that circle for twenty-four hours, technically mortal enough to be killed but safe from all except creatures of the liminal – which basically means the two of us – and all that's achieved is a mild illusion of the moon in the daytime sky."

Yuri thought. "In exchange, I get to not hear Viktor start on about 'why isn't King Yuuri accepting my gifts? He doesn't like roses? What should I do, Yuri?' I swear, the two of them better get it out of their systems."

Phichit smiled, the smug and cruel smirk of someone about to find a way to record the aftermath of metaphorically locking the pining lovers under the Vault of the Sky for posterity. "Well, then. Best be off, gotta compile the Full Moon report, I'll send in that list of attendees for the Eclipse Gala-"

Yuri groaned as a green flash streaked across the sky. "-noted, got it."

There was a long pause in which neither of them moved, or did anything. The Viceroy of Dawn regarded the lightening skies, as all under heaven awoke for the time of day. "Do you think," he began, and paused.

"Otabek's gonna be back soon, he's just helping out the Tempest Department for the next three weeks," Phichit started to set out. "See you tomorrow!"

"...wait, what?" Yuri snarled. "Otabek, he didn't tell me! Oi, Dusk, _answer me!_ "

* * *

 _ **Critiquez, s'il vous plaît !**_

 **1 Multiple notes:**

 **The Eastern Crown is a gold crown surmounted with a variable number of sharp spikes. It is so called because of its origin in the Eastern Mediterranean.**

 **As for the Astral corolla:**

 **\- a Corolla is an ancient headdress made of a garland or wreath and worn as a small circlet or crown. Usually it has ceremonial significance and represents victory or authority.**

 **\- The Astral Crown is a gold crown surmounted with eight low points. The centrals and laterals points are topped with a star, with an unspecified number of points, between two wings.**


End file.
